🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <rshapiro-1408950937080001@esb.bbn.com>, rshapiro@bbn.com (R Shapiro) writes:
> In article <40mqib$msc@wormhole.cognos.com>, douvilld@Cognos.COM (Derek
> Douville) wrote:
> 
>>One cannot fully apreciate the advanced organizational features of C++
>>until they've programmed in C.  
> 
> And you can't understand the "advanced" features of C until you've
> manually set bits in hardware with toggle switches, right? Therefore every
> new programmer should start by programming in machine language -- yeah,
> that's a *great* way to teach modern principles of programming...
> 

Actually, you are both correct, but Derek moreso. Let's face it, you
have to write tens of thousands of lines of C code for years on
several large projects, before you can appreciate WHY C++ and OO
work so well.

Two years ago I got a job at my current employer as an experienced C
and TCP/IP programmer. I was thrown into 100,000 lines of badly
designed C++ code and asked to make it work. I leanrned C++ in a week.
I will never look back. I use C++ now because I like to think about the
application, C++ allows me to do this. Any large program, even one
in C, requires object-oriented thinking (e.g. - modularity) if
it to eventually work reliably, so why not use a language which supports
this?

I mean, people complain about the *this pointer, but jeez, if you
write large programs in C you end up having to incorporate something
which emulates *this anyways, I know because I am still trying
to finish up a program I started writing three years ago, in C.
Its huge (55,000 lines right now), and is getting to the point that whenever
I want to add new things to the program, I spend days getting all of the cases
and pointer casts and references and everything straightened out. And
it still ain't right. If I had starte dthis in C++ (I didn't understand
C++ when I started), I could have done it in a year wit 1/3 of the
code.

Blab blab blab. Program in C if you like it. I've outgrown it.

-Garrett


> -- 
> rs/rshapiro@bbn.com